Tag Archives: Collen IP

Avoiding “Cringe-Worthy” Contests

Posted on June 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

Have you thought about vetting social media contest winners? If not consider how it would look to see a picture of your CEO handing one of those oversized checks to a convicted felon. In an interview with private investigator Shannon Tulloss, Kyle-Beth Hilfer, of counsel to Collen IP, discusses the risks and potential pitfalls of not vetting potential contest or sweepstakes winners. In some cases the risks or consequences will be legal. In most, there’s a significant danger of a PR disaster.

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Posted in Contests, Law and Social Media

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Pinterest’s Copyright Challenges, Continued….

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

In her most recent blog on Pinterest, Kyle-Beth Hilfer, Of Counsel to Collen IP, writes of the continuing copyright challenges posed by social media sharing site Pinterest.  The bottom line, according to Hilfer is that, “[I]f you are going to put up content on Pinterest, get used to it being there for the duration and out of your control.” Pinterest’s new Terms of Service do offer some comfort to artists that the site is not out to hijack their work, but once it’s up there and re-pinned it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible to remove it. The bottom lines is that Pinterest seems to be carving out its own Fair Use exception. Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen. At present, it’s untested.

To read the entire blog posting, click here.

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Posted in Copyrights, Law and Social Media

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Pinterest’s Legal Predicament

Posted on March 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

In her blog, Kyle-Beth Hilfer, Of Counsel to Collen IP, writes about the copyright predicament facing social media darling Pinterest. Her opinion is that Pinterest cannot grow into a mature company until it figures out how to handle the legalities of “pinning” on its site.

Reading between the lines, Pinterest is claiming it does not understand copyright law, and it is waiting for others to teach it about the law. Its opt out system implicitly acknowledges that copyright owners may not like having their content taken without permission in its entirety and replicated on Pinterest’s site.

If Pinterest is going to mature into a thriving company with staying power, it’s going to have to make users comfortable with its business model.

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Posted in Law and Social Media, Uncategorized

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Forbes: Copyright Class Warfare

Posted on March 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

In his weekly column in Forbes.com Jess Collen of Collen IP draws an analogy between class warfare and the copyright wars. In this case, he asserts that it’s the 99%ers  who are on the wrong side of the demilitarized zone. It’s been stated, glibly, that “information wants to be free,” and given the amount of pirated material freely available that may well be a sentiment shared by the 99%. Collen points out however, that the material that’s created by artists, writers, filmmakers and others is actually their property. It’s not there for the taking. He points out that people don’t walk out of a fruit store with their pockets filled with apples and oranges because the price is too high. To take it one step further, you’ve never heard anyone argue that the fruit really belongs to all of us because its provided by the Earth which belongs to us all. Fruit takes hard work to produce, on property that doesn’t actually belong to all of us. It’s a thought provoking article, most definitely worth a read.

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Posted in Law and Social Media, Uncategorized

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Facebook’s Lousy Trademark

Posted on February 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

In his first column on Forbes.com, Collen IP’s Jess Collen writes about the origins and the advisability of Facebook’s name. Jess comments that Facebook was exceptionally lucky to have kept its name over the first few years of its existence.  Using a descriptive term, like Facebook, for a site that started, well, as an online facebook, could easily have been used in a nearly identical form by others. The risk eases with the passage of time (and an increasingly large legal budget) and Facebook is now out of the woods, one imagines. However, that might have been the case when Mark Zuckerberg was working out of his dorm room. A much safer bet is a name like Google or Yahoo!. Apple is a tremendous example, according to Collen. It’s a term that has absolutely nothing to do with computing. Well, that was the case when Steve Jobs was working out of his garage.

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Posted in Facebook, Law and Social Media

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Social Media and Legal Landmines

Posted on January 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

The Altimeter Group released Jeremiah Owyang’s report, “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation,”earlier this month. A major theme of the paper is that companies may need the help of outside vendors to manage the chaos of the social media world.

Kyle-Beth Hilfer, Of Counsel to Collen IP, followed up with a blog entry of her own, describing some of the legal risks involved with engaging social media vendors:  1) Establish the ownership of social media accounts IN ADVANCE of an engagement; 2) Realize that vendors frequently do not accept legal liability for their work; 3)  Ensure that vendors are following corporate policies. Just having a policy is not enough.

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Posted in Law and Social Media

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Bringing Law and Order to the Wild West of Mobile Marketing

Posted on January 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

Mobile remains the “Wild West” of the marketing world. Every day there are new applications, new developments, new technologies…. and new problems. Kyle-Beth Hilfer, Of Counsel to Collen IP, was interviewed earlier this week for PR News “As Texting Moves from Simple Bottom-Line Actions, R U Ready?” (Subscription required). Kyle-Beth’s blog entry includes a thorough summary of the article as well as some of the actions that mobile marketers can take to avoid legal problems.

In the interview she commented on the most serious legal risks in mobile marketing:  1) creating a proper consumer opt-in which must be specific in nature and limited in scope; 2) conducting legal prize promotions; and 3) identifying privacy concerns.

Kyle-Beth added that the enforcement of federal and state statutes in the area of mobile marketing are on the rise. Other concerns for mobile marketers include the CAN-SPAM Act, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and Telemarketing Sales Rule.


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Posted in Law and Social Media, Mobile Marketing, Social Marketing Blunders

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